Bradford Cox Quotes - Page 2

Everybody just needs to realize that when you write something you're just in one mood. I was told I needed to write it and it was overdue; I don't even remember what day it was.

I'm real critical of myself. I think a lot of what I've done is boring indie rock. I didn't intend it to be that way, but somehow milk gets added to everything.

Usually I'm not really conscious of what's going on. I don't have a lot of memories onstage. At all.

The first thing I think I ever played in public, aside from singing in church, would have been - and this is a true story - when I was about nine or 10 years old, I was obsessed with Twin Peaks. I played the theme from Twin Peaks on a little tiny Casio keyboard. People politely applauded. I just fell in love with that song and thought it was very heartbreaking.

I like playing at public schools. I like when there's more of a diverse audience. I'll play wherever people want to hear my music, and I'll be glad and grateful for the opportunity, but I'd rather not play for a bunch of white privileged kids. I'm not meaning that in a disrespectful way; you go where people want to hear your music. So if that's where people want to hear me play, I'm glad to play for them. But I'd rather play for an audience where half of them were not into it than one where all of them were pretending to be into it, for fear of being uncultured.

All music is devotional, whether it's devotion to products, face washes, creams, plastic. Everybody is devoted to something.

You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste. In my case it's kind of weird because I started out being known more for ambient things and ambiguous music, but what's experimental for me is the more traditional structure. For me, experimenting involves traditionalism.

I'm not the guy in the dress with the blood and the unrequited gay whatever - which, according to my psychiatrist, my gayness is a form of narcissism but you'll have to ask him about that.

Audiences tend to dig the earlier stuff by any given musician, and the artists themselves always tend to prefer the thing that they're doing now.

I've got this thing where I always kind of diss the older stuff and favor the newer stuff. I mean, it's not just my thing; every artist or musician is like that, I guess.

The same people that always think I'm pretentious will think I'm pretentious, and the people who relate to me will continue to relate to me.

I don't like the sound of my own voice. And, for people I don't know, their impression of me is what they read on the internet, and they're so far off a lot of the time.

I see a lot of people doing an "'80s thing" who weren't even born until the '90s.

It's made me cynical at a young age to see how overlooked certain groups I've admired are.

I think people are intimidated by me, and I don't know why. Sometimes even my own bandmates can be intimidated, or irritated, by me.

My entire education in music was in reading interviews with bands like Stereolab and finding out about Brazilian music or a Romanian composer. You expose yourself to what people you look up to admire.

That's what culture is based on, the passing down of a certain narrative by imitation.

You think about people like Elvis, Kurt Cobain, or the Beatles, who grew up without privilege and needed a certain validation through peoples' acceptance, or admiration from their peers. And money is part of that, but it always comes too late.

I want the music to be heard as close to when I made it, as much as possible. I don't want to get into some "future of the music industry" thing, or where I stand on digital this or that, but I think it's ridiculous that a lot of people in the industry plan so far ahead that it makes a lot of improvisation impossible and makes a lot of people's expectations fixed and not fluid.

I want to satisfy the listener, exactly. I want to entertain the audience. I want the people to leave the show with the feeling I used to leave shows with when I was young, and I couldn't get over it for another three or four days after it. I just kept reliving the set in my mind.

When money and fame happen too late, it's like pouring kerosene over a fire of self-loathing.

People roll their eyes and say, "Oh god, he's not rich or famous." I say it's relative. I mean, look at me: I'm 115 pounds and I grew up without money. To me, I'm rich because I don't have to worry about paying rent. I don't think about money now.

We all come back to our little worlds.

In reality, I've probably got the lowest self-esteem of anybody I know, which has really been rubbed in my face lately in personal situations.

People say 'I don't want to die alone!' But you know what, honestly? I don't want to die with a bunch of people looking at me.